Famous Promises Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Promises poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous promises poems. These examples illustrate what a famous promises poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Rg Gregory
for what my heart held clear
and didn’t have the wit to show
for what my path proposed
and got lost in its diversions
for what my beginnings dreamed
and my ends cannot lay hold of
for what promises i made
and have not had the shine to keep to
i ask your understanding
for what i have been
and could not be another
i ask your love...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
A farmer's wife, both young and gay,
And fresh as op'ning buds of May;
Had taken to herself, a Spouse,
And plighted many solemn vows,
That she a faithful mate would prove,
In meekness, duty, and in love!
That she, despising joy and wealth,
Would be, in sickness and in health,
His only comfort and his Friend--
But, mark the sequel,--and attend!
This Farmer, as the tale is told--
Was...Read more of this...
by
Denise Levertov
My wedding-ring lies in a basket
as if at the bottom of a well.
Nothing will come to fish it back up
and onto my finger again.
It lies
among keys to abandoned houses,
nails waiting to be needed and hammered
into some wall,
telephone numbers with no names attached,
idle paperclips.
It can't be given away...Read more of this...
by
Joy Harjo
Nearly everyone had left that bar in the middle of winter except the
hardcore.It was the coldest night of the year, every place shut down, but
not us.Of course we noticed when she came in.We were Indian ruins.She
was the end of beauty.No one knew her, the stranger whose tribe we
recognized, her family related to deer, if that's who she was, a...Read more of this...
by
John Matthew
Resolutions I have made,
Kept, I have none,
Why do I have to make,
Resolutions anymore?
I pause through endless time,
For this year to pass,
And the lights of celebration to die,
On this New Year day.
Remember those magical days,
When the promise of togetherness,
Held us together, tentatively,
Alas! No more!
Years just flow by,
As water beneath bridges,
Gathering speed towards,
The great sea of immortality.
There you and I,
Will...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
(a)
they seek to celebrate the word
not to bring their knives out on a poem
dissecting it to find a heart
whose beat lies naked on a table
not to score in triumph on a line
no sensitive would put a nostril to
but simply to receive it as an
offering glimpsing the sacred there
poem probes the poet's once-intention
but each time said budges its truth
afresh (leaving...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
I am the love killer,
I am murdering the music we thought so special,
that blazed between us, over and over.
I am murdering me, where I kneeled at your kiss.
I am pushing knives through the hands
that created two into one.
Our hands do not bleed at this,
they lie still in their dishonor.
I am taking the boats of our beds
and swamping them, letting...Read more of this...
by
Langston Hughes
When a man starts out with nothing,
When a man starts out with his hands
Empty, but clean,
When a man starts to build a world,
He starts first with himself
And the faith that is in his heart-
The strength there,
The will there to build.
First in the heart is the dream-
Then the mind starts seeking a way.
His eyes look out on...Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
A prisoner under the stars I lie,
With no friend near;
To-morrow they lead me forth to die,
The stake is ready, the torments set,
They will pay in full their deadly debt;
But I fear them not! Oh, none could fear
Of those who stood by Daulac's side
While he prayed and laughed and sang and fought
In the...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
The names and titles of Christ. From several scriptures.
With cheerful voice I sing
The titles of my Lord,
And borrow all the names
Of honor from his word:
Nature and art can ne'er supply
Sufficient forms of majesty.
In Jesus we behold
His Father's glorious face,
Shining for ever bright,
With mild and lovely rays
Th' eternal God's eternal Son
Inherits and partakes the throne.]
The sovereign King of kings,
The Lord...Read more of this...
by
Marge Piercy
Tomatoes rosy as perfect baby's buttocks,
eggplants glossy as waxed fenders,
purple neon flawless glistening
peppers, pole beans fecund and fast
growing as Jack's Viagra-sped stalk,
big as truck tire zinnias that mildew
will never wilt, roses weighing down
a bush never touched by black spot,
brave little fruit trees shouldering up
their spotless ornaments of glass fruit:
I...Read more of this...
by
Jonathan Swift
To the Priest, on Observing how most Men mistake their own Talents
When beasts could speak (the learned say,
They still can do so ev'ry day),
It seems, they had religion then,
As much as now we find in men.
It happen'd, when a plague broke out
(Which therefore made them more devout),
The king of brutes (to make it plain,
Of quadrupeds I only mean)
By...Read more of this...
by
Adrienne Rich
Either you will
go through this door
or you will not go through.
If you go through
there is always the risk
of remembering your name.
Things look at you doubly
and you must look back
and let them happen.
If you do not go through
it is possible
to live worthily
to maintain your attitudes
to hold your position
to die bravely
but much will blind you,
much will evade you,
at what cost who...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
I—THE LURE
No, no,—forget your Cricket and your Ant,
For I shall never set my name to theirs
That now bespeak the very sons and heirs
Incarnate of Queen Gossip and King Cant.
The case of Leffingwell is mixed, I grant,
And futile Seems the burden that he bears;
But are we sounding his forlorn affairs
Who brand him parasite and...Read more of this...
by
Jean Toomer
Full moon rising on the waters of my heart,
Lakes and moon and fires,
Cloine tires,
Holding her lips apart.
Promises of slumber leaving shore to charm the moon,
Miracle made vesper-keeps,
Cloine sleeps,
And I'll be sleeping soon.
Cloine, curled like the sleepy waters whtere the moonwaves start,
Radiant, resplendently she gleams,
Cloine dreams,
Lips pressed against my heart....Read more of this...
by
Dylan Thomas
My hero bares his nerves along my wrist
That rules from wrist to shoulder,
Unpacks the head that, like a sleepy ghost,
Leans on my mortal ruler,
The proud spine spurning turn and twist.
And these poor nerves so wired to the skull
Ache on the lovelorn paper
I hug to love with my unruly scrawl
That utters all love hunger
And tells the page the empty ill.
My...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
"Hullo, Alice!"
"Hullo, Leon!"
"Say, Alice, gi' me a couple
O' them two for five cigars,
Will yer?"
"Where's your nickel?"
"My! Ain't you close!
Can't trust a feller, can yer."
"Trust you! Why
What you owe this store
Would set you up in business.
I can't think why Father 'lows it."
"Yer Father's a sight more neighbourly
Than you be. That's a fact.
Besides, he knows I got a vote."
"A vote! Oh,...Read more of this...
by
Paul Muldoon
I am stretched out under the lean-to
Of an old tobacco-shed
On a farm in North Carolina.
A cardinal sings from the dogwood
For the love of marijuana.
His song goes over my head.
There is such splendour in the grass
I might be the picture of happiness.
Yet I am utterly bereft
Of the low hills, the open-ended sky,
The wave upon wave of pasture
Rolling in, and just...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
The promises of the covenant of grace.
Isa. 55:1,2; Zech. 13:1; Mic. 7:19; Ezek. 36:25, etc.
In vain we lavish out our lives
To gather empty wind;
The choicest blessings earth can yield
Will starve a hungry mind.
Come, and the Lord shall feed our souls
With more substantial meat,
With such as saints in glory love,
With such as angels eat.
Our God will every want supply,
And fill...Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
Men with picked voices chant the names
of cities in a huge gallery: promises
that pull through descending stairways
to a deep rumbling.
The rubbing feet
of those coming to be carried quicken a
grey pavement into soft light that rocks
to and fro, under the domed ceiling,
across and across from pale
earthcolored walls of bare limestone....Read more of this...
by
Christina Rossetti
Promise me no promises,
So will I not promise you:
Keep we both our liberties,
Never false and never true:
Let us hold the die uncast,
Free to come as free to go:
For I cannot know your past,
And of mine what can you know?
You, so warm, may once have been
Warmer towards another one:
I, so cold, may once have seen
Sunlight, once have felt the sun:
Who...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Quels sont ces bruits sourds?")
{XXIV., July 17, 1836.}
Hark to that solemn sound!
It steals towards the strand.—
Whose is that voice profound
Which mourns the swallowed land,
With moans,
Or groans,
New threats of ruin close at hand?
It is Triton—the storm to scorn
Who doth...Read more of this...
by
James Whitcomb Riley
A goddess, with a siren's grace,--
A sun-haired girl on a craggy place
Above a bay where fish-boats lay
Drifting about like birds of prey.
Wrought was she of a painter's dream,--
Wise only as are artists wise,
My artist-friend, Rolf Herschkelhiem,
With deep sad eyes of oversize,
And face of melancholy guise.
I pressed him that he tell to me
This masterpiece's history.
He turned--REturned--and thus beguiled
Me with the...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
The offices of Christ. From several scriptures.
Join all the glorious names
Of wisdom, love, and power,
That ever mortals knew,
That angels ever bore:
All are too mean to speak his worth,
Too mean to set my Savior forth.
But O what gentle terms,
What condescending ways,
Doth our Redeemer use
To teach his heav'nly grace!
Mine eyes with joy and wonder see
What forms of love he bears for...Read more of this...
by
Linda Pastan
It was early May, I think
a moment of lilac or dogwood
when so many promises are made
it hardly matters if a few are broken.
My mother and father still hovered
in the background, part of the scenery
like the houses I had grown up in,
and if they would be torn down later
that was something I knew
but didn't believe. Our children were asleep
or playing,...Read more of this...
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